Contract
by Saber Knight
Summary: At the time, Hideyoshi was a single-child and only eight and a half years of age when he came across a being not of this world. It was dying without a place for it to be, without a place for it to draw power from after it had been exiled from its own world. Hideyoshi allowed it a way to continue to live, and that is how she, a demon, came to be Hideyoshi's twin.


I was dying... my being falling apart as I laid in the shadows of an alley in the human world after having been exiled from my own world. Here, with no link to my power or any power, I was falling apart. My demonic energy dispersing from my body - only a shadow shaped like that of a 3-D human.

I knew I would soon be dead; that I would soon live no longer and would forever be gone from any world save for the one where demons went when they died. As I laid there, I could only lament on how my power had been when I was still living in my own world.

But I would never again have such power. I would never again be able to exert my powers over others and intrude upon the human world like I had done so before my exile. There was, of course, a way for me to continue living in the human world, but that required a link to draw life energy from humans.

The link? It would have to be a human being; a human being willingly and knowingly allowing a being such as me access to life, his or her life to be exact. Not only that, but also the lives of every single human-being on the planet.

And what kind of human being would do something like that?

"What... are you?" A little girl's voice came from right next to me, startling me out of my thoughts and forcing me to look to my side. There, in front of me, knelt a young girl of no more than eight years with shoulder-length brunette hair and green eyes.

I was quite surprised by this girl coming up to me, a being of only shadow. I would have been surprised that she wasn't scared of me if I hadn't seen such fright evident in her eyes. She had to be a brave little girl indeed.

This was my chance to live, but I couldn't lie or disregard the truth - such are the unfortunates of exile, forced to tell the truth to nearly any question they ask. My lips moved involuntarily, my voice spewing out the truth before I could even attempt to stop it. "A demon."

She blinked, surprsing me even further when she did not run away. "A demon?" She asked me as her eyes glanced across my body. "You look like a shadow to me..." She whispered, her voice indicating that she wasn't sure how to more accurately depict how I looked like to her.

"It's because I'm dying." I said to her, wishing I had a visible form of eyes so that I could make actual eye contact with her.

I was so pitiful reduced to such a state that robbed me of my pride, of my attitude as a pure-bred demon. I could have laughed right then and there if I had not been afraid of scaring her away.

What came next surprised me. "Y-you're dying!?" The girl exclaimed, concern taking over the fright in her eyes. "D-do I need to get my parents? We can take you to the hospital..."

Her voice trailed off as a smile appeared on my face, amusement washing over me as I witnessed the girl's reaction. "Your parents would do me no good, and neither would a hospital." I wanted to tell her there was a way for her to save me, to help me, but I couldn't... not when I was bound under exile... Only she could-

"I-is there something I can do to help?" I couldn't believe what she had just asked, a few moments of silence passing by before I managed to regain my voice.

"Yes, there is." I told her, already dreading the moment when I would be forced to tell her everything.

"W-what is it?" She asked me, leaning forward as she continued to look at my shadow-of-a-face.

"I need a link... into the human world so that... so that I can draw life energy and use that life energy to allow me to continue living."

"L-life energy?" She asked, the fright returning to her eyes.

I gave a small nod before continuing. "It's the time one lives, and we demons must consume such time to stay alive in this world. We take three seconds of a human life for one second of our own life... but do not fear, there are billions of humans on this planet... I could extend my power over all of them and only take a tiny amount from each one to live for years." Would she run away knowing this?

"D-does it hurt them?" I could have raised an eyebrow at the girl if I had one, but I did not have one so I merely had to content myself with a soft smile.

"It only shortens their lives by a few seconds, no physical or emotional pain results from it."

The girl didn't speak at first, only giving a small nod before asking even more questions. Luckily, her mere presence here and talking to me kept my energy and being stable, so I was plenty patient enough to wait for her to speak. "W-what did you mean by a link?"

This was progressing quite well for me, but it was still uncertain if she was going to be my savior or not. "A link is a human being, like yourself. I merge with your very being to become one, and depending upon your spiritual power, I can either inhabit the same body as you or make my own body based off of your own."

"I-is that all to being a link?" She asked, her eyes showing uncertainty in them.

I shrugged my shoulders, the mere action causing some of my stable energy to waver. "I can share power, or thoughts, or even sensations with my link. In human terms, it'd be something like a... twin, though it'd be deeper than just that."

She looked down at the ground, her hands clasped together as the fright and uncertainty vanished from her eyes. Instead, it was now replaced with something... deeper...

"I've always wanted a twin sister..."

As an exiled demon, I couldn't choose my link, the link herself or himself had to choose me instead in some manner or context. This girl... she had done just that, allowing me to view into her soul and the lines of spiritual power she had manifesting inside of her. There were so many lines of power coursing though her, my hand automatically reaching forward to grasp the center of them.

Then, I was swallowed up by the power, an image of the girl herself coming into my mind. I willed my body to be a twin of the girl, it's stages of development coming into my mind and then going out of my mind to form the body I was to inhabit. But there were also thoughts and feelings and emotions that were not mine coming into me, some of them infiltrating the creation of my body.

Then the memories, her memories and falsified memories of my own filling my brain. The world was changing, people changing. I would not be a stranger to the human world in the eyes of the humans or even nature itself... to them, to the Earth itself, it would be like I was always here with the girl and her parents... neither of them would remember not having me around, not even the girl herself who had now became my link.

No, not a girl... memories of bathing together surfaced, and now I could clearly... _remember _that 'she' was... _is _my twin brother... Kinoshita Hideyoshi...

Then, my own name... a name she - he - had chosen for me without knowing...

My name...

_Kinoshita Yuuko._


End file.
